On 4 June 2013 13:27, <josef.pktd@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think functional (not unit) testing is pretty much the standard in
> the area of developing statistical algorithms even if nobody calls it
> that way. And I don't know of any references to software development
> for it.
Yes, functional and unit testing of an existing implimentations
appears to be, as you said, pretty much common practice. But What I
had in mind was a methodology of first designing and coding with the
functional tests (initially failing) c.f. TDD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development
Your MC workflow seems to follow this logic though.
Regarding the iteration process you refer:since we are doing many
iterations, at some point we lose track of where did we start in the
process: but I think TDD could help us to focus on the result in the
scientific software projects.
> research, that is testing the workflow and not the computational
> tools.
This is very curicial point I think. Workflow and computational tools
are two seperate things;
If we think tools as APIs. A workflow may require to use an API but it
isn't our responsibility
to test the API.
Best,
-m